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| Nina Dobrev as Wanda Maximoff |
|
| Name: |
Wanda Maximoff |
| Birthdate: |
{$birthdate} |
| Faction: |
Mystics / SHIELD |
| Codename: |
Scarlet Witch |
| Position: |
Sorceress |
| Hometown: |
Mount Wundagore, Transia |
| Partner(s): |
Stephen Strange |
Height: |
5'9" |
| Father: |
Erik Lensherr |
Weight: |
120 lbs. |
| Mother: |
Marya? Natalya? Chthon? |
Hair Color: |
Reddish brown |
| Siblings: |
Pietro, Lorna |
Eye Color: |
Honey-brown (red) |
| Children: |
Billy, Tommy, Vic, don't ask… |
|
|
Background
Once upon a time, a handsome man and a clever young woman fell in love.
Magic doesn't come without a cost. Life does not come without a price, often paid in blood, tears, and sweat. The Maximoff twins bear proof to these sorcerers' maxims.
They were conceived by the darkest rituals and born under fell circumstances on the slopes of Mount Wundagore. Younger by thirteen minutes, Wanda's entry to the world ushered her mother into death. Perhaps that was for the better; an Elder god, Chthon, chose the newborn for a purpose yet unrevealed. God-marked, she became a prize pawn and test subject for Chthon's mortal cult while the Second World War raged across Europe. The cult's second-in-command grew disillusioned with the main priest and defected, taking the twins with him on a decade-long flight through fallen eastern nations and smoking battlefields.
Wanda is the child of countless revolutions. The Forest Brothers in the Baltic States. The Poznan students in Poland. The bloody uprising in Budapest, Hungary of 1956. Tibet's revolt against China in 1958. Berlin in 1961 behind the rising wall. Conflagrations are her birthright, violence and upheaval her childhood playmates.
Where other children learn to play with dolls, she learned how to navigate the woods without food or water. Her adoptive father's lessons were vicious and brutal, focused upon her survival at the expense of trust. At the age girls sing skipping songs, she chanted incantations. Her magical abilities manifested strong and early, forcing the family to seek tutelage to control her sorcerous gifts. Yaga, her mentor, used teaching methods no kinder than the canny, violent man she called Father.
Dark, dread forces allied against the Maximoff twins flushed them from every bolthole, depriving them of shelter, security, and eventually every line of defense except wits and natural or augmented gifts. Wanda lost her adoptive father in 1956, and her mentor — an ancient, powerful sorceress — by 1960, in the pursuit of secrets buried in snow-swept monasteries and hidden Nazi archives.
The Berlin Wall trapped Wanda and Pietro in Germany for nearly two years as they ruthlessly pursued the truth of their existence from surviving officers and Communist bureaucrats. But eventually threats closed in on them, and Chthon came calling in America. Sometimes you can't outrun the past. They bolted with the assistance of a SHIELD agent and reached New York by way of several intervening stops, penniless, nameless, and hunting ghosts.
A month later, the infernal portal was closed, Morgan Le Fay lay dead under a starry sky, and Wanda Maximoff harboured a horrific secret.
In the year since, she assumed the role of the Mistress of the Sanctum and the unquestioned grumpy shadow to Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme.
Salient Details
- Probability Manipulation: Her mutant ability affects probability fields at the molecular level within her line of sight. Wanda violates the laws of physics and science by causing unlikely phenomena to occur by projecting hex bolts or spheres at a target. The possible manifestations are conceivably endless, subject to her mental calculations, environment, and degree of control. Positive or negative effects happen immediately, following the general visualization of her intent. Her powers derive strength from her will; focused concentration gives a more precise outcome. The more power she throws behind an individual hex field, the faster she depletes her energy. In an altered state, she might not the means to even fling a shaped bolt. Stress or exhaustion enhance her failure rate, and the chance of unpredictable outcomes that trend violent when the hex is unshaped.
- Hex Bolt: An energy beam that creates an outcome generally favourable to Wanda. For example, a hex might heal an ally, deflect incoming projectiles (mundane or magic), or divert local environmental energy to make an object jam, decay, or spontaneously combust.
- Hex Blast: An uncontrolled blast explodes on contact, following the bolt rules above.
- The Sight: She has continuous awareness of magical energies in her vicinity. Her mystical perception detects magic phenomena like disruptions, distortions, active spells/items, and invisible entities. Unless she actively concentrates on the magical signature, she only perceives general auras and flows.
- Sorcery: Wanda inherited magic from her mother, and she has studied classical sorcery and witchcraft under a powerful sorceress and her adoptive father, an ex-cultist. Sorcery amplifies her reality manipulation mutation, based on magical (not scientific) principles. Her training focuses on the four elements, the natural environment, and thought casting. Her potential is great, but advanced training limited.
- Elementalism: Wanda's innate tie to the Earth gives her strong affinity for earth, air, fire, and water. Magically distinguishing nuances in them is a fundamental skill. She controls, shapes, and directs these elements, but can't create them from thin air. This sorcery diminishes away from natural environments.
- Dispel Beam: Blasts of pure magical energy that disrupt or weaken magical effects.
- Shields: Arcane shields deflect deleterious magic effects. Ritual shields are much longer lasting but limited by whatever type of magic they are keyed to. Reflexive shields are brief and unpredictable in strength.
- Telekinesis: Manipulate or levitate objects/people, including personal flight under 50 mph. Multiple objects increase the risk of faulty outcomes or backfiring.
- Teleportation: She transports herself and others by opening a short-lived gateway to another site. Dimensional travel is draining and dangerous.
- Thought-craft: Like most accomplished sorcerers, Wanda projects her will in illusory constructs than can be very simple sensory impressions up to elaborate creations. She is most skilled at concealing herself with invisibility or fading out of sight. She potentially wields a wide variety of effects with practice, but is currently limited by inexperience. Her thought crafting is more potent when modifying something existing or anticipated.
- Astral Projection: Wanda's mentor trained her to project an intangible spirit from her body in order to commune with her and other mystics. Wanda requires intense focus and meditation to leave her physical body behind. She calls this 'accessing the goddess' realm.' She can travel without limits to barriers or physical obstructions, but neither can she affect anything physically. Psychic and mystic attacks can harm her. She cannot stay separated from her body for longer than 24 hours without adverse effects as her body starts to waste away. Wanda cannot project if she is experiencing deep mental instability.
- Sorcery: A gifted sorceress, Wanda practices classic sorcery through rituals and spells, and witchcraft, based on elementalism, blessings and curses. She has a deep functional knowledge for how magic works and occult practices, being fine-tuned by experience in the field. A weak point for her is joint casting with others. She also has an intuitive comprehension for extradimensional summoning, binding, and warding beyond her years, thanks to Chthon. Years as a hunter and tracking down cults have given her a deep breadth of infernal lore.
- Survival: Hunted by cultists and a mad god, Wanda survived guarded by a paranoid, powerful cultist and now by her wits. In practical terms, she usually has a disaster plan and go-bag. A keen sense for lying or danger coupled with a talent for getting out of a bind keeps her and Pietro alive. In the worst situation she finds a way to keep going, no matter the cost.
- Combat: Wanda is a competent hand-to-hand fighter who uses every dirty trick in the book to stay alive. She can use guns, swords, knives, and even handmade explosives like Molotov cocktails well, and knows where demonic and human weak points are. Though she prefers to use magic over physical combat, she's hardly helpless in a fight using guerrilla tactics. She relies heavily on her probability warping abilities for maximum effect, deflecting incoming attacks or causing weapons to misfire. Her spells give protection and can attack hostile opponents, but she isn't skillful enough to overcome more seasoned magic users' defenses.
- Athletics: Gymnastic grace, climbing, and running full tilt are part of Wanda's repertoire. Her best skill is actually dodging rather impressively. She is particularly good at evading blows and strikes, falling boulders, and incoming magical attacks.
- Languages: Wanda speaks fluent English, Russian, German and Romany. She uses magic to help improve her fluency in others. She knows smatterings of many other Eastern Bloc and Baltic tongues, Mandarin, and Tibetan due to her travels.
- Sneaky: Wanda can vanish into a crowd like no one's business, or keep a low profile. Pietro's better at it, though.
- Charms: Given their lifestyle, Wanda keeps several good luck charms on her person. These temporary objects carry probability-warping spells that can simulate a number of simple positive effects, like changing a traffic light, keeping the train doors open a little longer, creating a great first impression, or creating a diversion. They work once to benefit their wearer. Sometimes she offers them as gifts.
- Family: Family ties, even adoptive ones, have got through thick and thin. Her twin brother always has her back and she would move Heaven and Earth for him. Anyone she adopts as family gets a bond deeper than life.
- Mentor: Her mentor is one of the finest sorcerers alive. Her skill in witchcraft and elemental sorcery is peerless. Her guidance over the years has refined Wanda's magical craft. She astrally projects herself to give lessons with typical harsh snark.
- Predictive Powers: At one level, she excels at thinking on her feet. At another, Wanda's mutation relies on her ability to measure probability quickly. She can accurately perform advanced mathematical equations or statistical measurements under pressure.
- Chthonic Vessel: The elder god's dubious favour lies upon her, which imparts a dim level of protection from other infernal entities and cults unwilling to tangle with him or the Darkhold cultists. It's unlikely she would ever use this unless absolutely forced.
- Altered Mutant: A dark Nazi ritual altered Wanda and her twin in utero, drawing on the energies of Mount Wundagore and Chthon to add extra codes. This enhanced her mutant powers, but also made them - and Wanda herself - unpredictable. It's hard to know exactly what those alterations mean for her, and those around her, a cause for concern.
- Burnout: Wanda burns energy like a Saturn V rocket. "I'm hungry" is something you never want to hear from her. Hunger and slipping focus have a significant effect on the reliability of her powers.
- Chthon's Favorite Girl: An elder god took a personal interest in Wanda at the hour of her birth. Chthon laid his mark upon her, and many sorcerers, infernal entities, and his cultists know it. The Darkhold cultists view Wanda as his personal property and take any necessary measures to return her, living, to the fold. She has little idea of what his dark plans for her may be, and seeks the means to destroy their connection before she turns into a vessel or a puppet for his terrible power.
- Freedom of Movement: Wanda uses speech and gestures to activate her sorcery. When gagged and bound, she cannot use her mystic powers, and relies wholly upon her innate mutant abilities.
- Illegal Alien: She doesn't have official documentation to be in the US.
- Instability: Wanda's powers, especially her mutation, are affected by her emotional and mental state. Stress reactions without control produce unexpected, often violent responses. She can do real harm with undirected hexes and probability warps, which upsets her further, creating a terrible feedback loop.
- Suspicious: After a lifetime on the run, Wanda views the world through ash-coloured glasses. Behind her smile is a mind dissecting someone's probable motives and purposes, and she trusts no one until they have proven themselves ten times over. Too many times, help comes with strings attached and that good Samaritan ends up being a demon or cultist eager to capitalize on the twins. Starting on default footing someone wants something out of her, and she will end up with a losing hand is fairly rough on building up relationships or accepting anything at face value. It impacts her life, leaving her lonely and isolated more than it could be.
- Nazis, Communists, Demons, Oh My!: They all seem to find Wanda, and that's just for starters. The twins have started baiting their enemies as a result…
Gallery
Logs
